Spring 2017

While awaiting the highlight of 2017 exhibition program—the retrospective of Gerhard Richter, planned to open on April 26 in the Kinský Palace—the National Gallery in Prague is proud to announce its 2017 grand opening on March 16 in the Trade Fair Palace.

The following exhibitions will be inaugurated on that evening:

Ai Weiwei, Law of the Journey
March 17, 2017–January 7, 2018

After having presented his groundbreaking sculpture in the public space, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads in the National Gallery in 2016, Ai Weiwei returns with the first exhibition in Central-Eastern Europe. Staged in the Trade Fair Palace’s monumental Big Hall as well as across other spaces of the building, Law of the Journey is composed of a site-specific installation developed around the artist’s concern with the refugee crisis. A powerful tribute to human tragedy as well as testimony to human desire for home and a sense of belonging, Law of the Journey additionally includes the installation Laundromat (2016), a portrait of the refugees from the camp in the Greek village of Idomeni. With Flowers, Traveling Light, Snake Ceiling further expand the notion of human condition and social injustice.

Curators: Jiří Fajt and Adam Budak

Magdalena Jetelová, Touch of Time
March 17–September 3, 2017

Site-specific installation by Czech/German artist, Magdalena Jetelová (born 1946), transforms the Small Hall of the Trade Fair Palace into an expanded field. Conceived in a dialogue with the grandiose architecture of the venue, it recalls a devastated landscape of collective memory and reflects upon instability and fragility of the global social situation. What is the leading power in this world? How should one react when the observed landscape no longer appears idyllic? The installation extends into the adjacent mezzanine, where a relevant selection of Jetelová’s works for 1980s is shown.

Curator: Milena Kalinovská

Kneaded Knowledge. The Language of Ceramics
March 17–August 27, 2017

Together with artists Ai Weiwei and Edmund de Waal as curatorial partners for the show, this exhibition focuses on material long attributed to the realm of handicraft: ceramics. Unjustly so, as throughout history, it was constantly recontextualized by contemporaries.

Artists: Ai Weiwei, Edmund de Waal, Lynda Benglis, Alison Britton, Hans Coper, Lucio Fontana, Vlastislav Hofman, Pavel Janák, Asger Jorn, Kazimir Malevich, Fausto Melotti, Joan Miró, Isamu Noguchi, Pablo Picasso, Lucie Rie, Marit Tingleff, Peter Voulkos, as well as Meissen porcelain and early Asian ceramics

Curator: Peter Pakesch

Keiichi Tahara, Photosynthesis 1978–1980
featuring the performance Locus Focus by Min Tanaka
March 17–August 27, 2017

Large format black-and-white photographs by the acclaimed Japanese photographer, Keiichi Tahara (born 1951), are based upon photo sessions with the legendary Japanese actor and dancer Min Tanaka (born 1945), a founder of the so called “hyper-dance.” Experimenting with various types of light, Tahara explored the relationship between physical light and the human body.

Curator: Adam Budak

Epos 257, Retro-Reflection
March 17–June 4, 2017

Young Czech artist known as Epos 257 graduated from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague and works with the urban environment and urban iconography. His works develop a dialogue with the city as a medium, elaborating on the anthropological concept of “liminality” and reflecting on the dispute over the “border” between public and private.

Curators: Jiří Ptáček and František Teplý

Moving Image Department #7:
Brian Eno, The Ship, featuring Jan Nálevka
March 17–September 10, 2017

The seventh chapter, a visual void and a suspense of motion (picture), goes astray as its centerpiece is occupied by no moving image. Instead, it acts as a moving image generator itself, proposing an imaginary picture—a phantom—as a construction of sound and light. The recent 25th-solo-album-cum-multi-channel-three-dimensional-sound-installation, The Ship (2016) by the pioneer of ambient and experimental music, Brian Eno (born 1948) was described as a “musical novel”—a loose story collage inspired by the sinking Titanic, World War I and random throwaway lines from emails and Eno’s own (failed) writing, all-in-all remastered by an algorithmic text generator. Additionally, the exhibition includes the artist’s seminal 14 Video Paintings (1981 and 1984), composed of Thursday Afternoon and Mistaken Memories of Medieval Manhattan. Self-referentiality is at the centre of the post-minimal work by Czech artist, Jan Nálevka (born 1976) that complement Eno’s work.

Curator: Adam Budak

Poetry Passage #5:
Henri Chopin, Ladislav Novák, L’esprit des poètes officiels et crochus. 
March 17–September 10, 2017

Poetry Passage #5 draws parallel lines between French-English pioneer of “poésie sonore” Henri Chopin (1922–2008) and Czech visual artist and poet Ladislav Novák (1925–99), who used to collaborate on several occasions, including Novák’s contributions to the review OU, published by Chopin between 1964 and 1974. It includes Novák’s groundbreaking compositions La structure phonétique de la langue tchèque (1970), Homage to John Cage, and Silence from the turn of the 1960s–1970s. Photo-collage The Jail (1976), dedicated to Novák, as well as Chopin’s “audio-poems” complement the presentation.

Curator: Adam Budak

Introducing Pavla Dundálková:
When I Close the Window, I Donʼt Hear the Street Noise
March 17–September 10, 2017

Czech artist Pavla Dundálková (born 1990) graduated from the Sculpture Studio of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Her work combines video, spatial installation, sculpture and applied arts. She prepared a multi-layered installation which responds to the contemporary social and political situation, a commentary on the escapist tendencies of both past and present.

Introduced by Pavlína Morganová

Olafur Eliasson: Green light–An artistic workshop
March 17–19, workshop
March 21–April 2, presentation 

Initiated by the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson in collaboration with Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) in Vienna, Green light–An artistic workshop responds to the current situation of social transformation, displacement, and migration. Through the communal fabrication of Green light lamps and an educational program based on shared learning principles, the project constitutes a dynamic space that elicits various forms of participation and engagement. During the iteration in Prague, former Green light participants will introduce visitors to the project by inviting them to assemble Green light lamps and participate in the informal exchange of experience and knowledge.

Coming soon:
František Skála Riding School, March 10–September 3, 2017, Waldstein Riding School, Curator: Tomáš Pospiszyl
Charta Story / The Story of Charter 77, March 14, 2017–January 19, 2019, Salm Palace